Abstract:

The study examines emergent changes on the activities of burial societies during the transitional
period from the 2006-2008 Zimbabwe dollar to the present multiple currency regime. Burial
societies are mutual arrangement groups that provide social safety nets in poor communities in
times of illness and death. These societies utilize the concept of collective action as a poverty
reduction strategy. Conceptually the study is grounded in Bourdieu’s theory of practice in order
to show how socio-economic changes affect the organization of burial societies and how actors
employ different survival strategies to safeguard their positions. The study makes use of both
qualitative and quantitative approaches with a view to counteract the weaknesses of each
approach by the strength of the other. Mixed methods that include a self-administered
questionnaire on 50 burial society respondents, key informant, unstructured in-depth interviews
and a review of secondary data sources are conducted. Key findings of the study are that prior
Multiple-Currency regime burial societies have reorganized with varying degrees of success in
the new economic environment. However, there are mild changes in terms of financial
management and organizational outlook. A number of drawbacks, such as, fraudulent claims,
embezzlement, pilfering, restricted funds and lack of investment plans are uncovered. Factors
such as ethnicity, gender. Class and occupation determine worker participation in burial
societies. There are contrasting views of the effectiveness of burial societies as revealed by the
study with some respondents describing the role of societies as negligible. The transition from
the 2006-2008 Zimbabwe dollar era to current multi-currency regime era had positive and
negative impacts on the viability and organizational outlook of burial societies in a mining
community of Mazowe. However, the research also established that these burial societies have
opened up to new sensibilities by adopting a variety of strategies to safeguard their
interests.Recommendations are given highlighting areas that need improvement in burial
societies and a need to understand how wider society burial societies are coping in the multicurrency
environment. The thesis concludes by stating that burial societies still play an integral
role in mining communities and are still popular among immigrants. These societies have largely
remained a preserve of men with comparatively few women.